Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Could do better.Could be fitter too.My Pilates teacher expressed surprise to see meattempting an Intermediate session this morningafter a short break.I'm thinking of taking up gymnastics.It can't be too late can it?

I donned a scarf for the first time (couldn't come soon enough) and headed to the konbini for some sort of a baked happening for breakfast.

Cycling back with an intriguingly un-Danish Danish pastry, there was a definite hint of a chill in the air, and what had initially seemed like an extravagantly warm getup proved to be a both prudent and fashionable choice. I sipped something that might have been blue mountain coffee and ate something with the surface crunch of a baguette and the intriguing insides of a croissant seemingly made with salted butter, and tried to read something Japanese before heading off for classes.

At this point, I'll admit, I love commuting. Whether it's the ten minute walk to lectures back home, the thirty minute train journey into central London, or as today, the exhilarating three-minute cycle into university. There are backstreets through which you can pick up surprising amounts of speed, and then you shoot into the grounds of a temple complex, ornate buildings separated by criss-crossing paths lined with freshly-pruned pine trees.

Fast forward through the lessons and I'm commuting back again, cycling along the lazy L shape that the path describes to get back home, and that sharp, clean air is persisting long after the morning chill has burnt off. It's so clean that you can smell it; a smell you never get in London, only ever in the countryside. Surprising, considering that there seem to be just as many cars as any other city.

Just as I turned onto my road, there was a whiff of woodsmoke, a smell so universally welcoming and evocative of the cold half of the year that for the first time I felt I was really doing my commute. It's not a smell that you only get in Japan or only in England.

It's that wonderful smell that you only get on the perfect autumn day, wherever you happen to be. Clear, crisp and, after a summer that outstayed its welcome, all the more gratefully received.Akibare: When the autumn sky is vividly clear and bright; fine fall weather; a lovely autumn day.

A surprise fast forward to spring.My crocuses are in flower.Or is it a colchicum?

that Nature has achieved.Meanwhile on the bulb frontI am holding back on tulip planting until the weather is colder,and fretting about whether I have planted the others deeply enough.I read the instructions diligently and then dig every holeonly as deep as my trowel will manageor until I hit a stone.I doubt that this is as deep as it should beto guarantee future years of flowering.